A Party for the Broken by Tom Hirons

“Tonight we will have a party
Only for the broken pieces.
Only the crooked and the blunt ones
Are welcome tonight;
The shattered and the stained can come,
But you perfected ones should stay away.
All the orphans and exiles
Will be arriving soon with their
Bundles of rags and sorrow.
Make room, you bright angels:
Now the wounded are coming home.
Tonight will be a celebration of our tragedies
And our petty stupidities,
Our shameful transgressions,
The unedifying failure
To become what we might have been
In other, more radiant lives.
Here are the unrelinquished griefs
And the never-forgiven slights;
Here is the stuttering clumsiness
And all the stagnant laziness.
Here is the hollow
In my heart.
Come in.
Welcome.
I’m so glad you’re here.
Outside, the Buddhas
And the Saints are laughing.
In here, there is a quieter
Communion of our tragedies.
Sit. There is food and cheap wine,
A warm fire and candles.
Eat. Drink. Then speak,
And we will all weep
Sticky and graceless tears.
At this party, we are dancing
To the tune of ten thousand folksongs,
Each one of imperfection
And darkly holy for it.
This is the party for the broken.
Imperfect music plays
For imperfect dancers.
Imperfect speeches are
Imperfectly spoken.
We bang tables and forget
Our words and
Wash the floor with our tears.
You shattered and stained beauties,
All crooked and graceless as you are,
Blunted by the hard world of death,
Love and the push of time’s spear;
You who are more glorious than statues,
As rich in stories as pirates,
As worthy as comets or stars,
This is the secret I want,
Tonight, to tell you:
Our dark-tongued singing
Reaches heavens even the Saints don’t know;
Our graceless, defiant dancing
Opens up the whole Universe.
The broken world is our country.
The struggle is our homeland.
Tonight, let the Buddhas be silent;
In here, we will raise our glasses
To our brokenness, howl
And sing so loud and badly
That all the bright and dark
Heavens will hear our song.”

“Prayer is an act of love. Words are not needed. All that is needed is the will to love..
It is love alone that gives worth to all things.”

Teresa of Avila

“All my days I have been careful never to pluck a blade of grass or a flower needlessly, when it had the ability to grow or blossom. You know the teaching of our sages that not a single blade of grass grows here on Earth that does not have an angel above it, commanding it to grow. Every sprout and leaf says something meaningful, every stone whispers some hidden message in the silence—every creation sings its song.”

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook

“Real knowledge is knowing oneself in the soul and heart:
if you don’t know yourself, all books read won’t it impart.
Why read many books? To know the One, All-Powerful!
If you read but don’t know it’s but a start, don’t depart!
Do not boast of reading, of science, prayer and reverence:
if you can’t see man as God any learning isn’t very smart.
The Holy Book’s real meaning is in the alphabet’s first letter:
preachers talk about that, what does it mean, make a start!
O holy one, Yunus says: go on pilgrimage if necessary
a hundred times, but if asked I’ll tell you, best to visit heart.”

Yunus Emre (d. 1321)

“You are the heaven and You are the earth,
You are the day and You are the night,
You are all pervading air,
You are the sacred offering of rice and flowers and of water;
You are Yourself all in all, What can I offer You?
Wander from shrine to shrine, visit gods, look all over for fulfilment.
The further away you look from your own self,
the greener seems the next heap of grass.
The way is like a herb garden:
enclose it with silence, self-restraint, and actions that follow these.
Then offer everything you do on the Mother’s altar.
Gradually your whole crop of deeds gets eaten,
and only emptiness remains.”

Lalla Ded (14th century Kashmir)

“View the starry realm of heaven,
shining distant empires sing.
Skysong of celestial children
turns each winter into spring.

Great you are, beyond conception,
God of gods and God of stars.
My soul soars with your perception,
I escape from prison bars.

You, the one within, all forming
in my heart and mind and breath,
you my guide through hate’s fierce storming,
courage in both life and death.

Life is yours, in you I prosper,
seed will come to fruit I know.
Trust that after winter’s snowfall
walls will melt and truth will flow.”

Norbert Fabián Čapek, founder of the Unitarian Church in Prague, who was gassed in the concentration camp at Dachau on this day in 1942

From Strength in the Storm: Transform Stress, Live in Balance & Find Peace of Mind by Eknath Easwaran

“One of the curious games I learned as a Boy Scout was musical chairs. There would be thirteen of us and only twelve chairs, and we would all circle around while someone sang our Scout song. Whenever the singer stopped, everyone had to find a seat – and of course, one boy would be without.

Each time around, one more chair would be taken away. As the game got faster and faster, we would begin to push each other and do all kinds of impossible things like trying to jump on a chair from behind, panicky because we were afraid we’d be out of the game.

Many people seem to treat life like this. Time keeps taking away the chairs, and we run around in more and more of a panic trying to get a seat – even if it means someone else will have to go without.

But in every age and culture there are a few – people like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Mahatma Gandhi – who find this approach to life as meaningless as the game. After a few rounds of scurrying like the rest of us, they quietly step aside.

Like children, we might feel sorry for them. “Poor Francis! He can’t run around any more.” But we have to admit they seem to enjoy their choice. Great spiritual figures like these go through life without fuss and frenzy as if they had all the time in the world, and their lives seem so much richer than ours that we have to stop and wonder why. They even seem to accomplish more, so that their lives have enduring value, meaning, and the power to inspire.

Where does this sense of fullness come from? How can such people live without hurry but make each moment count? The Buddha would give a simple answer: it is because they live completely in the present – the only time there is.”

“The moving spirit of militancy is deep and abiding reverence for human life.”

Emmeline Pankhurst, who founded the Women’s Social and Political Union on this day in 1903

“This is the work
of the Sabbath.
All creatures flowering
out of themselves,
a rose, a cluster
of galaxies, the pollen
of the stars,
a blue-green egg
at the center
of a well woven nest.
The work of the effortless.
A prophet does not see
into the future.
A prophet sees
deeply
into the present moment.”

Fred Lamotte

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”

Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, on this day in 2004